pillow; the rest tossed, and reeled, and danced, and
seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, they looked so gay and
glancing.' It may also be noted that the Poet's future wife contributed
to this poem these two best lines--

'They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude.'

Or take another description from Miss Wordsworth's Journal of a
birch-tree, 'the lady of the woods,' which her brother has not
versified:--'As we were going along we were stopped at once, at the
distance, perhaps, of fifty yards from our favourite birch-tree: it was
yielding to the gust of the wind, with all its tender twigs; the sun
shone upon it, and it glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower.
It was a tree in shape, with stem and branches, but it was like a spirit
of water.'

The life which the Poet and his sister lived during the eight years at
the Townend of Grasmere stands out with a marked individuality which it
is delightful ever so often to recur to. It was as unlike the lives of
most literary or other men, as the most original of his poems are unlike
the ordinary run of even good poetry. Their outward life was exactly
like that of the dalesmen or 'statesmen'--for so the native yeomen
proprietors are called--with whom they lived on the most friendly
footing, and among whom they found their chief society. Outwardly their
life was so, but inwardly it was cheered by imaginative visitings to
which these were strangers. Sheltered as they then were from the
agitations of the world, the severe frugality of the life they led
ministered in more than one way to feed that poetry which introduced a
new element into English thought. It kept the mind cool, and the eye
clear, to feel once more that kinship between the outward world and the
soul of man, to perceive that impassioned expression in the countenance
of all nature, which, if felt by primeval men, ages of cultivation have
long forgotten. It also made them wise to practise the same frugality in
emotional enjoyment which they exercised in household economy. It has
been well noted {0a} that this is one of Wordsworth's chief
characteristics. It is the temptation of the poetic temperament to be
prodigal of passion, to demand a life always strung to the highest pitch
of emotional excitement, to be never content unless when passing from
fervour to fervour. No life can long endure this strain. This is
specially seen in such poets as Byron and Shelle